The man suspected of hate crimes in three killings at Jewish institutions near Kansas City on Sunday sprang from what once was among North Carolina's most fertile soil for racist activism, Johnston County, before leaving the state after a lawsuit, a series of arrests and a short prison stint in the late 1980s.

While he was living with his family on a Johnston County farm, few people anywhere in the nation were more active in promoting racial hatred and anti-Semitism than Frazier Glenn Cross, who is widely known as F. Glenn Miller Jr.

A nephew who lives in Johnston County said Monday that Cross' most recent visit to North Carolina was perhaps a decade ago, for a relative's funeral, though he still kept up with family members here by phone.

David Barker of Four Oaks, whose mother, Jacqueline Miller Cavanaugh, is Cross' sister, said he last talked with his uncle two weeks ago. Cross had called to check on his sister, who had broken her leg and was in a nursing home.

"I talk to him quite often, and I just don't know where this came from," Barker said. "His wife told the media he had been at a casino and had won some money. I don't know if he lost his money, or someone said something to him or he had got drunk."

Cross, a former U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant, was forced out of the military in 1979 for activities related to racism, according to a dossier on him compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He lept to national prominence among hate groups in 1980 when he founded an organization called the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He later changed the name of the group to the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and then to White Patriot Party as it turned into more of a paramilitary group.

For a time it was regarded by some Klan-watch organizations as the most active white supremacy group in the country, though they said it likely had just 150 to 300 members rather than the 1,500 Cross claimed.

In addition to his role as a white supremacist leader, Cross was known for perpetually running for office, at least in part so that he could use the public platform to preach his message of hate. In North Carolina his campaigns, with white supremacy platforms, included bids for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1984 and the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1986.

Cross was present at one of the most notorious incidents in modern North Carolina history, the 1979 "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro in which five members of the Communist Workers Party died in a shootout with Klan supporters. But he wasn't charged in relation to that case, and the Klansmen and Nazis who were charged won acquittal.

Page 2 of 3 - Cross' legal downfall began in 1984, when the Southern Poverty Law Center sued his group. Cross was forced to sign a consent order to stop harassing African-Americans and quit running a paramilitary operation.

In response to the lawsuit, he said that the group would switch its focus from "black racist crime" to exposing Jewish communists. He continued to operate, though, and staged high-profile rallies in Raleigh and in Shelby and Forest City, west of Charlotte.

In one Raleigh event in 1985, he led about 300 uniformed Klansmen, carrying Confederate battle flags, on a march to the state Capitol. In another, he drew a crowd of about 300 to the legislature for a protest against school integration. Police said about half were counter-demonstrators.

"Our goal is an all-white independent Southern republic just like our forefathers had," he told the Charlotte Observer in 1986.

Cross was convicted that year in U.S. District Court in Raleigh of violating the consent order. Prosecutors said his group had been stockpiling weapons and was a threat to the government. He was sentenced to six months in prison and three years of probation but appealed the conviction.

While out on bond, he got permission from federal authorities to move to Virginia with his family, but then went underground and fled to Springfield, Mo. He then sent a declaration of "total war" against the government, African-Americans and Jews, written in 1987, to his mailing list of 5,000 white supremacists that offered a point system to his followers: 1 point for killing an African-American, 10 for killing a Jew, 20 for an abortion provider and more for a "race traitor."

The declaration decreed that he be buried in his White Patriot Party uniform with his arm raised in a white power salute. Within days, though, federal agents captured him and three other men in a mobile home filled with guns, hand grenades, ski masks, police scanners, 1,500 copies of the war declaration and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

The die-hard racist quickly turned informant on other supremacists, and federal prosecutors recommended him for the federal witness protection program and offered him a reduced sentence. In a sentencing memo filed with the federal court, a civil rights attorney with the U.S. Justice Department said Cross had cooperated with investigations of crimes committed in at least three federal jurisdictions, and helped state investigators with a case in which three men were murdered at an adult book store in Shelby.

Klan-watch groups said that white supremacists across the country who had regarded Cross as a hero began referring to him as a race traitor -- worth 50 points to kill, according on his own scale.

When he got out of prison in 1990, Cross became a truck driver and moved to Iowa, then Missouri, where he also ran for office several times but never got more than a handful of write-in votes, according to the Kansas City Star. He sought the 7th District U.S. House seat from Missouri in 2006, and filed as a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010. That year, he bought or tried to buy advertising time on several Missouri radio stations for ads that bitterly denounced Jews, the federal government and African-Americans.

Page 3 of 3 - It's unclear why he changed his name to Cross, but an acting U.S. attorney told the Associated Press in 1988 that Cross and his family would take on new identities under the witness protection program.

Cross had mostly stayed away from North Carolina since he left prison, in part because he was so hated for giving evidence against the other white supremacists, family members said.

Barker, Cross' nephew, said that his father had served in the military with Cross, and always told Barker not to be swayed by Cross' thinking.

His uncle, Barker said, had always behaved well toward his family. He declined, though, to say whether he thought Cross was capable of the crimes he's accused of, or whether Cross had ever threatened violence.

Asked whether Cross had shared views on race and religion with him, Barker was silent a minute before simply saying yes, and declining to elaborate.

"I could be putting my life on the line answering these questions," Barker said. "He still knows a lot of people in North Carolina."

News researcher Teresa Leonard contributed to this report.

Frazier Glenn Cross' NC connection

The man reported to be behind the fatal shootings of three people near Jewish facilities outside Kansas City on Sunday had North Carolina ties, according to several sources.

He even ran for state office twice.

The suspect was identified by a jail employee in Missouri as Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, of Aurora, Mo.

The Southern Poverty Law Center said Cross also is known by Frazier Glenn Miller.

The Southern Poverty Law Center also told the Associated Press that it had reached Miller's wife, Marge, and she said authorities had visited their home and told her that her husband was arrested in the attacks.

While living in North Carolina for more than two decades, Miller served as grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He founded the White Patriot Party in 1980.

Records show that Miller was a candidate in the Democratic gubernatorial primary election in North Carolina in 1984 but finished last. He also ran in a Republican primary for a state Senate seat in 1986 and finished last.

Miller was arrested in 1987, according to several sources, on weapons and other charges and served time in prison.

After living for years on a 25-acre farm in Angier, in Harnett County about 25 miles south of Raleigh, he moved to Missouri in 2002.

He ran for Congress in Missouri in 2006 and for Senate in Missouri in 2010. The second time, he received only 7 votes of about 2 million cast, according to records.